Speaker 1: Welcome to the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio from Boise, Idaho.
This is your host, Adam Graham. In a moment, we're
going to bring you this week's episode of The Big Story.
But first I do want to encourage you if you're
enjoying the podcast software and I want to highlight one
of our other podcasts, the Old Time Radio snack Wagon.
And there. Every week we bring you a short form podcast.
It can be across of why variety of different genres,
including music, comedy, drama, and storytelling. Now, from October twenty sixth,
nineteen forty nine, here is the corn Cob Killer.
Speaker 2: Now a big story about a reporter who found the
solution to a murder before the murder was committed. Hell
Mel presents the Big Story.
Speaker 3: Say boss, what is it? Drollar, here's that story I've
been working on. I don't think you'll like it.
Speaker 4: Why not?
Speaker 5: Well, for one thing, I name the murderer in the lead.
You name the what the murderer?
Speaker 6: You haven't got a cook, you haven't got an apparent crime,
you don't even know there's been a murder, And you
name the murderer.
Speaker 7: Not in my paper, not in my paper.
Speaker 2: The Big story here is America. It's sound and its fury,
it's joy and its sorrow, as faithfully reported by the
men and women of the great.
Speaker 4: American newspapers.
Speaker 2: Huntington, West Virginia from the pages of the Huntington Advertiser.
The authentic story of the corn cob Killer for his
work in the case to Harold Pallor for his big story,
goes the pell Mell Award, Huntington, West Virginia. The story
is it actually happened? Harold Pallor's story as he lived it.
Speaker 8: A mountain lion with bunions is a purring pussycat compared
to your city editor as he pinned your ears back
for handing in a certain story. You Harold Palla and
the Huntington Advertising and put one and one together to
make two, then two and two together to make a murderer.
Deadline is writing page one, and you have X minutes
to justify yourself and your story.
Speaker 5: And the boss keeps yelling.
Speaker 7: Not in my paper, Peller, not in my paper. Why
don't you read it first before I tear it up?
Speaker 9: You mean sure, gimme.
Speaker 6: Ivy row. River boy is dead. Body lies at the
bottom of the Ohio River. He is believed to have
been murdered by Charlie Grimes. No no, no.
Speaker 5: No, believed to have been by whom by me. You'll
let me prove it.
Speaker 9: Lets you valor.
Speaker 8: I'm all ears, and into those unfriendly ears you pour
out your young. But first, before those unfriendly eyes, you spread.
Speaker 5: On the dead a map of West Virginia.
Speaker 3: Boss, I will follow the Ohio River here down to
the little town of Antiquity.
Speaker 5: That's where this whole thing is.
Speaker 8: Antiquity, No kidding, Well, the only thing that moves is
the Ohio River. And even that slow and easy going
you tell the boss about this down by the.
Speaker 10: Gone, it so lazy slow, I saw to do it.
Speaker 11: I want to see she go.
Speaker 9: She's gone, dad, not like the tick.
Speaker 12: Yeah, she's the ruler man, putter have it.
Speaker 13: He's sure his folk?
Speaker 12: How did how did you sure walk?
Speaker 14: Quiet?
Speaker 9: Mister?
Speaker 13: Uh huh? Boat for Savis?
Speaker 4: Nope, not even for.
Speaker 15: Fifty dollars nope, seventy five?
Speaker 12: Well maybe hundred.
Speaker 10: Yeah, would a man be a fool play out there
for this year?
Speaker 15: I'm a fool one thing though, We'll say. I don't
have the cash money on me. She's in the bank
down the river Point Pleasant.
Speaker 5: I got Uncle Berry down there.
Speaker 15: All right, Then you ride me down at the ways.
Speaker 4: I'll give you the money there.
Speaker 12: Let me talk to my boy a minute.
Speaker 5: Mistery, you go ahead.
Speaker 4: I'll look the boat over.
Speaker 12: I don't trust him. I have one hundred dollars.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of money.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I don't like his upper grass legs. No, he's
kept fish miles maybe.
Speaker 5: H a dollar's dad.
Speaker 12: It's so needful, all right, but it's still don't trust it.
Speaker 11: Oh, don't fret about me, all.
Speaker 3: Right, mister, vote myself a boat, got yourself a pilot too.
Speaker 8: You'll move your finger on the map down the Ohio
to point Plaster Her uncle Berry lived, and you tell
the boss his story.
Speaker 9: There's my uncle Berry on top.
Speaker 12: Hi, Hi, uncle Berry?
Speaker 9: Who it's me Uncle Berry?
Speaker 16: Why?
Speaker 9: Boy? Then? How you gone?
Speaker 16: And grow?
Speaker 17: What you doing?
Speaker 16: Downton river?
Speaker 18: I saw the pilot in this man, Uncle Berry.
Speaker 5: He's done both the boat gonna pay me out of
the bank.
Speaker 19: We'll come on up to the house and bring your friend.
Reckon it, Ulsa, you got enough rich and bring you.
Speaker 15: Extra mighty candy. Your friend with me and the boy
don't want.
Speaker 19: To put you out and won't shoot yourself, stranger, I
have a boy. You come on into the office and telephone.
Speaker 4: You ain't Julie.
Speaker 19: Well she learns you you've been and gone without her
seeing you. Well she'll just naturally pet me to the catfish.
Well come on, boy, I'll.
Speaker 20: Give you a hand, eh I did.
Speaker 4: Boy?
Speaker 5: Who's that stranger? Just a fella happened along.
Speaker 4: Bought the boat.
Speaker 12: I don't like him.
Speaker 4: I don't want to see you taking up for the stranger.
Speaker 12: Avey, ivey, ivy, don't go with him.
Speaker 5: I got to We need that boat money. Besides, I'm
growed up enough to catch for myself. Shucks, the way
you talk, you think he was fixing to kill me,
your son.
Speaker 9: We gotta get gassed up. You got more traveling to do.
Speaker 4: Wherefore down the river?
Speaker 9: Eat that right?
Speaker 12: Ivy?
Speaker 21: Huh oh sure, sure we're going on down the Uncle
Berry going on down.
Speaker 11: Now.
Speaker 8: You put your finger on a town seventy miles down,
the Ohio Sportsman. But first you tell the boss about this.
Speaker 9: Vivery.
Speaker 12: This year is haby dad?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 9: How did he let me talk to the boy?
Speaker 6: He ain't here?
Speaker 5: He ain't you that?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 12: Yeah, I thought you stus you.
Speaker 19: Oh no, sure he going on down the river very yeah.
Speaker 10: Oh, the Lord ask him to search the river up
and down and search it good.
Speaker 12: I want my boy.
Speaker 8: All that you had found out by digging in antiquity
and in point Pleasant. But there all traces of the boat,
its fire, and the boy had ended soon. However, the
police sent this message boat found in river off Portsmouth,
and you sent this one back old man and boy
for questioning, and got this reply, what man and boy question?
Speaker 13: Mark?
Speaker 5: Boat had nobody on board?
Speaker 8: After you tell him that you lay just one more
thing in the boss's desk.
Speaker 5: It's a clipping from his.
Speaker 11: Own paper, your own paper, your own story, just.
Speaker 8: One week ago, and you refresh him on the story
of tell the story you yourself coping. That story began
in the powerhouse of West Virginias Prison that mounds Bell
and two convicts, one a trustee, are at their.
Speaker 15: Work knocker north time Jerry here in time you was
too words.
Speaker 4: Work man knocked don't.
Speaker 8: A quick flash at the generator belt and the prisoners
plunged into complete darkness and off the two prisoners. The
trustee lies dead and the other over the wall.
Speaker 5: Brust not escape. Convict with Charlie Grimes serving life for murder.
He took a life to escape. Look at your mouth
here here, here's Antiquity, and here's Moundsville. The time lag
is perfect.
Speaker 3: A tall, soft spoken stranger turns up at Antiquity one
day after the break. Here's one hundred dollars for a
beat up boot, goes off on the boat with Ivy
row and Ivy disappears from sight one and one makes two.
Speaker 6: The way you lay it on, Follard, it makes sense
if you only had a little more to go on
than to hernt I have, then why didn't you say so?
Speaker 4: What is it?
Speaker 3: The last person to see them together, the boy and
the stranger was Uncle Verey. Yeah, I confronted Uncle Verry
with a Rogues gallery picture of Charlie Grimes. He identified
Grimes as the man with his nephew Ivy.
Speaker 7: Fine, but do you know the boy is dead?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 9: Do you know a crime has been committed at all?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: No, Might I ask what you do know? I know
Grimes as a born killer.
Speaker 3: He used to throw corn cobs in the air and
plug them and then say, I'd a soon shoot a
man as a corn cob. And I know the life
of a river kid wouldn't mean any more than a
corn cob to Charlie Grimes if he thought for one
second the kid was on to him. And I know
the one way to stop him from killing again is
to spread the story of the rest of the state.
Speaker 5: Is on the watch. And what's more, I've got a
picture of Grimes to go with the story.
Speaker 3: Will you print the picture?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 3: And when you print the story, yes, sticking my neck out,
but here goes copy. It goes to the best the
line of types that makes page one, And then your
phone begins the ring.
Speaker 9: What are you trying to do? Terrorize the community? You
want to be horsewhipped? What are you trying to do?
Tip off that killer? We're looking for him. You show
your hair around state policing, you'll get it chopped off.
Speaker 5: But that's not all.
Speaker 8: The next day, a lean, quiet man appears at your desk.
Speaker 12: It's too Yes, you know who I am.
Speaker 5: No, No, sir, I don't shame.
Speaker 12: Oh I'll be dead. Oh somebody will that for me?
What you wrote up in the paper about my boy,
that he was lying on the river.
Speaker 5: Bottom, mister, I was only trying to see.
Speaker 10: I can't read, so I got to have things spelled
out for me the Bible, papers, letters and such. See
it was read out to me about my boy. I
was hiding my fearfulness behind my hope, but you killed
my hope.
Speaker 12: Now I'm all feared. That ain't what I come to
tell you, though.
Speaker 5: What is it, mister Rowan? What can I do for you?
Speaker 12: You've done it already, not for me doing what I've
come to let you know was I've been keeping all
this from Ivory's mall.
Speaker 10: I see, and you see, mister newspaper writer, it's Ivy's mall.
Read me the papers and search. I wanted you to
know what you've done. Maybe it was smart. I don't
know about that. All I know is it weren't good.
Speaker 11: No kind.
Speaker 8: He lives and doghouse is the name for where you are.
And the boss has no help even he does it
the Superway.
Speaker 6: Got your bagpeck fella, No, what you mean? You aren't
looking for another job?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 5: Now, look, boss, that's going too far after.
Speaker 6: Now he talks about going too far, Feller. If that
boy turns up alive, it's only going to be one
way to spell your name and mind, mud Mutt, there's
only one good thing. That story of combri What Resa
Dragon the river for a corpse, It might not even
be there at all. If there is a corpse, show
the police are dragging the river, but they turn up
nothing but all rubber.
Speaker 8: Boots and empty bottles. The next day, however, things look
a little better.
Speaker 9: You got a fellow named Feller working on your paper
for the time being. Why, well you better send him
on down to my town Alper's ferry, that is.
Speaker 5: Who are you sure?
Speaker 6: Hold it a minute, Feller? Pick up your phone and
listen to this. Go ahead, Well you're the man rude.
Speaker 9: Up, How Ivy Roll was killed by Charlie Rimes?
Speaker 5: I am why you better get on down here? Why?
Speaker 9: Just cause he just checked in the hotel here?
Speaker 5: Who rhymes ivy Roll?
Speaker 18: This is Cy Harris returning it to your narrator and
the big story of Harold Pallor as he lived it
and rot it you.
Speaker 8: Harold Fallow, have the Huntington advertising, have the paper and
yourself out on a nice juicy limb. Well the story
that Ivy Row, ribber boy has been murdered by Charlie Grimes,
mountain man and escaped convict. The only thing wrong with
the story is that you have nothing to go on
but a hunch and a faith. But now a phone
call has just saw that limb right off behind you.
Speaker 9: Oh, you better get on down here. You just checking
the hotel?
Speaker 11: Who?
Speaker 5: How do you know?
Speaker 9: Did you join the rich?
Speaker 11: And I can read you hang up?
Speaker 8: The look on the boss of face says sense it?
You reach for your hat and where do you think
you're going?
Speaker 5: Down there?
Speaker 9: At least the kid's story of the story go ahead.
They're at it.
Speaker 7: Say if you can get me a new job too, sure, well,
I'm DAVIDY.
Speaker 4: Can help you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm looking. Where's the shirt?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 5: To tired to be out to the hospital?
Speaker 4: Two three weeks? Maybe what happened?
Speaker 7: Guy held post office shot to Sarah.
Speaker 11: Oh was.
Speaker 5: Was the fellow named Ivy Row?
Speaker 15: How do you know?
Speaker 8: You're count up to ten? And then the ten again? Well,
the deputy shows you here.
Speaker 13: This here is a signature in the register.
Speaker 15: This he dropped out in his pocket in the FUS.
Speaker 3: Newspaper, clipping her my story. Well, at least I've got
one admirer.
Speaker 8: While you're waiting for them to get your office on
the phone, you wonder and Charlie persuaded the kid to
take up crime to blackmail them into it.
Speaker 5: Maybe I had.
Speaker 3: Charlie bus I have news for you.
Speaker 5: Look at, I've got.
Speaker 9: News for you. Let me bosses.
Speaker 5: They found Ivy Rule where where right where.
Speaker 9: You sit at the bottom of the river with a
bullet in.
Speaker 8: His back, So you are right now it's easy to
figure crimes use the kid's name. But from now on
you're going to make it harder for him to work
in the open and hammer at him in the paper
day after day.
Speaker 5: It'll somebody spot.
Speaker 8: Him, sure, big talk. Every paper in the state carries
his picture, every post office, every cross General's store, from
Frish Creek at Drive Fork, from Harper's Ferry to Canover.
Speaker 5: And what happened? He drops out of sight.
Speaker 11: One month, two months.
Speaker 8: Now hide a hair of Charlie Grimes. Then you get mad,
You hit the road, and while you're in Charleston lecturing
on law enforcements, somebody holds up a store in Fort
k on the Big Sandy and the word comes back
it was Charlie Grimes. You backtracks, digging into his past,
trying to find out where he might hide out.
Speaker 3: But before you can get a lead, somebody hijacked a
cruiser where a Sandy meets tug Fork and the word
comes back. Well, I know that face, as Charlie rives,
it was you, big Sandy, tug Fork boss. He's heading
south along the streams out of the state, sure, and
always sticking around people. He can melt into river Mountain,
a gas station in Marion, in the Middle Park in Virginia,
in Mount Holly, I'm on Cataba and North Carolina.
Speaker 4: I'll just trouble you for that.
Speaker 15: Mayottach Man is here, the real gun too.
Speaker 3: Following the rivers in the Mountain Valley's boss woner or
later here.
Speaker 20: Hello, it's Don marsh New very South Carolina. I've been
carrying around one of your stories about this Charlie grunt
and if the fellow just got off the tree down here,
ain't here, my Marshall, Why don't you come on down
here and we will take him together.
Speaker 5: Marshall, I'm there.
Speaker 21: Yes, sir, I know how you've been going up and
down the state on this fellas trail, making speeches and
quiz the suspects, and you kind of got me all
eager to help you out.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what I hope would happen. But where is it?
Speaker 21: Well, he got off the train and headed straight to
the hotel.
Speaker 11: Right across the square there. And he ain't come out.
Speaker 21: A yet because I've got a back door or and
the back door has got to watch it.
Speaker 5: You're sure its crimes.
Speaker 21: If it ain't, you've been printing a picture of his twins, brother, because.
Speaker 11: Thank god, like we're just talking the time away, just come.
Speaker 5: Fighting cox, mister.
Speaker 21: Why I got a pair of lundy round heads, al gaffi,
gizzards out of your hog topies and your white antles
are soon.
Speaker 11: It all right, he's going into the grocery. Come on, wait,
look through the window. That him. That's Grimes stand behind now.
Speaker 7: It's Jentry.
Speaker 9: In just a minute. Let me take care of this gentleman.
Speaker 21: Yeah, man, am all right, buddy, put up your hands.
I ain't pointing this gun at nobody else.
Speaker 5: Hey got no gun, mister, maybe so, but keep.
Speaker 21: Your hands up and turn to the wall. Mister Feller,
look in his pockets and drop what you find on
the floor.
Speaker 5: You're making a mistake.
Speaker 4: I got no gun.
Speaker 5: There's what.
Speaker 9: Two?
Speaker 16: Three?
Speaker 5: No gun?
Speaker 13: Huh five?
Speaker 9: Six?
Speaker 11: Anything else?
Speaker 3: Job hunting knife, jack knife and a racer, that's all man.
Speaker 11: You're a walking arsenal what's in your back pocket?
Speaker 4: Wallet?
Speaker 5: What's the name on that? Marshall rule?
Speaker 12: I have a rule. Come on, Grime, Maybe when all
the rewards for you were in, I can buy.
Speaker 16: A pair of hands. Right, No, I don't need him.
Speaker 8: Five hours later after you've promised him headlines galaw Charlie
Grimes is on a train for points plus there to
face the parents.
Speaker 5: Survive a row the boy he's killed?
Speaker 13: Why, well it is this way, mister.
Speaker 8: What's gonna give me my money?
Speaker 4: Pretty soon? Sunny?
Speaker 12: I gotta get home my dad he needs me for
the work.
Speaker 4: What you're gonna tell him about me?
Speaker 8: And nothing wrong?
Speaker 15: It's you gonna say I told you I wasn't naming
to pay you nothing for no vote.
Speaker 12: You ain't gonna do that to me. You gotta give
me what's coming to me.
Speaker 13: I aim too, Sonny.
Speaker 12: They know I ain't gonna tell my dad or nothing.
Speaker 13: Just look here, sonny, big cats, it's just busted water.
Speaker 4: What I just figured sooner or later he knew who I.
Speaker 1: Was, so I killed him.
Speaker 4: They fell it what I quit?
Speaker 11: Or how'd you predict just what I'd done?
Speaker 5: I knew the kind of mind you have.
Speaker 22: You know he had something you know it's a pity
you got me into this yere damn why you plenty
smart with me? Could have made a right good team
when you wrote that that story about.
Speaker 5: Me when your card in your pocket, Yeah, that's the one.
Speaker 4: When you wrote that one up, I figured.
Speaker 5: On killing you next.
Speaker 13: Thanks for the company, Yeah, I sure did.
Speaker 4: I never got the chance.
Speaker 13: So never got the chance.
Speaker 2: In just a moment, we'll read you a telegram from
Harold Power of the Huntington Advertiser with a final outcome
of Tonight's big story. Now we read you that telegram
from Harold Paller of the Huntington Advertisers.
Speaker 3: Escaped life Termer and Tonight's Big Story was returned to
West Virginia State Prison. He was subsequently tried for both
the murders of young Ivy Row and the trustee he
killed in escaping. In each case, he received another life sentence. Consequently,
he's probably the only prisoner in the United States serving
three life sentences for three separate murders. Thanks a lot
for tonight's Pellmell Award.
Speaker 2: Thank you, mister Foller. The makers of pell Mell famous
cigarettes are proud to present you the Pell Mail five
hundred Dollars Award for Notable service in the field of Journalism.
Speaker 18: Listen again next week, same time, same station, when Fell
Mail will present another Big Story. A big story from
the front pages of the Clovist New Mexico News Journals
byline Jack Hulls, A big story about a reporter who
met a murderer who found that the killing of two
men instead of one, involved the freedom of a third.
Speaker 2: The Big Story is produced by Bernard Jeff Proctor, with
music LIVELTI Missilenskus. The night's program was adapted by Alan
Sloan from an actual story from the front pages of
the Huntingdon Advertiser. Your narrator was Bob Sloan. Eryl Firestone
played the part of Harold pallow. In order to protect
the names of people actually involved in Tonight's authentic Big Story,
the names of all characters in the dramanization were changed,
with exception of the reporter, mister Paller. This is Derni
Chapel speaking for the makers of helll Famous Cigarettes. It
can happen to you, Yeah True, Welcome back well.
Speaker 1: Supporting mister Firestone in the cast were Hazel Logan, Jim Bowles,
Jim Stevens, Scott Tennyson, Bob Dryden, and Sandy Bickhard. An
interesting case that does seem to kind of mess with
some of the chronology, as this was about his first
attempt to break prison in nineteen twenty and the prison
break happened pretty much as told, and he killed another
prisoner in the process of escape because the other prisoner
resisted him taking the boat, while the radio episode treats
the taking of the boat as a separate incident with
a separate victim. Now, of course mister Griffith was up
for a murder, but he'd already been convicted of two
murders at the time of his escape, and this would
be the third, meaning the third life sentence. Now, sometime
after this program there would be a push for his
parole since he was said to be totally reformed and
a model prisoner, and this failed seventeen different times. He
did get released for medical reasons in nineteen sixty seven,
but he escaped his supervision and so ended up going
back to prison. And that information comes from these stories
Behind the Big Story by doctor Joe Webb and anyone
who helped him work on that. Well, now it's time
to thank our Patreon supporter of the day, and I
want to go ahead and thank Blaine. Patreon support order
since January twenty seventeen, currently supporting the podcast at the
rookie level of two dollars or more per month. Thanks
so much for your support, Blane, and that will do
it for today. If you're enjoying the podcast, please follow
us using your favorite podcast software and be sure to
rate and review the podcast wherever you download it from.
We'll be back next Tuesday with another episode of the
Big Story. But join us back here tomorrow for broadways
my beatware Behi dang.
Speaker 14: And it's all They're waiting for you. Detective Mugavn and
the Boy and Jan Dunhams a faded wolf shirt scrawled
in final exhaustion across the silk sheet of the hotel
bed the boy dead of a knife for.
Speaker 17: Quite a party next door. You're thinking a hotel this class.
They're ticking the.
Speaker 8: Wall all right, mug, what else have you got?
Speaker 17: The kidd stabbed down to the heart, couldn't find the knife.
Danny couldn't even bry a visitor out of the hotel manager.
Speaker 9: They're discreet, they.
Speaker 17: Don't notice on once business like this kid must have happened.
Speaker 14: That's why they tell me what.
Speaker 17: I was going to say to day. It's so discreet
in this hotel, That's why the party keeps going next door,
nobody knows if someone did accept.
Speaker 14: The manager and a couple of bell hops what made
them sit up and take all.
Speaker 17: This kid's phone was off the hook kept lighting a
light on the switchboard, but nobody said they wanted anything.
A bellhop came up to find out why.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll be with us then in the meantime,
send your comments to Box thirteen at Great Detectives dot net,
follow us on Twitter at Radio Detectives, and check us
out on Instagram, Instagram, dot com, slash Great Detectives from
Boise Ataho. This is your host, Adam Graham signing off.